A Quiet Flame

He seemed surprised at this admission. “All the same, I have to search you.”

“So why ask the question?”

“Because if you’re lying, then I’d figure you might be out to cause trouble,” he said, patting me down. “And then I’ll have to keep an eye on you.” When he had satisfied himself I wasn’t armed, he waved me to the door. Music, which was mostly an accordion and some violins, was edging its way into the yard.

In the doorway was a sort of coop that was home to the casita woman, a largish Negress who sat in an easy chair humming an altogether different tune from the one played by the tango orchestra. On her thigh was a paper napkin and a pair of lamb chops. Maybe they were her dinner, but they might just as easily have been the remains of the last man to cause trouble for the huge vigilante. She smiled a big, uneven smile that was as white as a swath of snowdrops, and gave me a sizing up-and-down look.

“You looking for a stepney?”

I shrugged. My castellano had much improved, but it fell apart like a cheap suit the minute it got snagged on the local slang.

“You know. The café crème.”

“I’m looking for Isabel Pekerman,” I said.

“Where you from, honey?”

“Germany.”

“It’s twenty pesos, Adolf,” said the casita woman. “Don’t know what you’ve got in mind, but the lady’s canfinflero is Blue Vincent, and Vincent prefers it if you give him the bouquet before you speaks to the gallina.”

“I only want to speak to her.”

“Don’t make no difference if you’re a hunter or not. Every one of these creolos is from the Center and if you speaks to baggage you’ll have to give him a bouquet. It’s that kind of joint.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.” I peeled off a couple of notes and pressed them into her leathery hand.

“Uh-huh.” She shifted for a moment and tucked the notes under one of her substantial buttocks. It looked as safe there as in any bank vault. “You’ll find her on the dance floor, probably.”

I breast-stroked my way through a beaded curtain into a scene from The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The brick walls were covered in graffiti and old posters. Around a dirty wooden dance floor were lots of little marble-topped tables. The low lights on the ceiling barely illuminated the lowlifes below. There were women with skirts slit up to their navels and men with trilbies pulled down low over their watchful eyes. The orchestra looked as oily as the music it was playing. The only thing that seemed to be lacking in the place was Rudolph Valentino dressed in a poncho with a whip in his hand and a pout on his mouth. Nobody paid me any attention. Nobody except the taller of the two women who were dancing the tango with eyes that had done a lot more than just meet.

I hardly recognized her from before. She looked like a circus horse. Her mane was long and very blond with just a touch of gray. Her eyes were big but not as big as her beautiful curving behind, which her skirt did nothing to conceal. She was also wearing a kind of spangled leotard that almost preserved her modesty. At least I think it was a leotard only, it was a little hard to be sure the way it disappeared between her buttocks.

I stared hard back at her, just to let her know I’d seen her. She stared back and then pointed at a table. I sat down. A waiter appeared. Everyone else seemed to be drinking cubano from large, round glasses. I ordered the same and lit a cigarette.

A burly man came over to my table. He was wearing boots, black trousers, a gray jacket that was a size too small for him, and a white scarf. He had pimp written all over him like the numbers on a pack of cards. He sat down, turned slowly to look at the circus horse. When she nodded at him, he looked back at me, spreading his mouth into a smile that was somehow both approving and pitying at the same time. I worked it out. He approved my choice of woman but pitied me for being the kind of jerk who would even contemplate the kind of degrading transaction that was about to occur. There was no fear in his craggy face. It was a tough face. It looked like something you could use to beat a carpet. When he spoke, his breath sharpened my thirst for strong liquor. I kept my nose in my glass until he’d finished blowing his patter my way.

Silently, I tossed some notes onto the table. I wasn’t in the mood for anything except information but, sometimes, information costs the same as the more intimate relations. He gathered the money in his fist and went away. Only then did she come over and sit down.

“I’m sorry about that,” she said. “I’ll get the money back off him at the end of the evening and pay you back later. But you did the right thing to pay him. Vincent’s not an unreasonable man, but he’s my creolo and creolos like things to look like what they’re supposed to look like. In case you’re wondering, he’s not my pimp.”

“If you say so.”